Mary Reid

The headline on a press release this week from Kingston Council read 'Health promotion in fish and chip shops'

Now I'm happy to admit dropping into the chip shop at the end of my road for the occasional haddock and chips - but I always feel guilty. It doesn't seem to sit well with Flora-that-I-can-easily-believe-is-not-butter and my weekly organic vegetable box.

And indeed, it seems I may be right to worry about the healthiness of my supper.

It seems that Environmental Health Officers in six southwest London boroughs, including Kingston, bought 24 fish and chip takeaways and then subjected them to analysis. They found a huge variation in the level of fats and salt in the samples, and are now working with the worst culprits to make the food healthier. 

That's very timely because in the last big recession, the Depression of the 1930s, fish and chip shops became the barometer of the times. 

My grandfather was a miner in the Aberdare Valley at that time. His job went, so he decided to run a fish and chip shop. For a while it became a cheap source of meals for the local people, but eventually even fish and chips, or just a bag of chips on its own, became a luxury.

It was said that only one man in 20 had a job in Aberdare. My father, who was a Grammar School scholarship boy, had to leave home at 16 (imagine it!) and travelled up to Hackney on his own where he got a job in a broom factory, fitting brush heads.

His parents decided that there was no future in fish and chips, or any other trade for that matter, so they moved up to Slough where my grandfather was able to get a job as a roadsweeper and they could be nearer their son. They faced prejudice - "These thieving Welshmen are taking all our jobs" - as well as poverty.

For a while, as the credit crunch bites, fish and chip shops may well become more significant in everyone's lives - it's when they start shutting down that you will know that our recession is turning into a second Depression.